18 NORTH AMERICAN FAUNA. | [vo. 16. 
The south and east sides, except the deep canyons of Mud, Ash, and 
Brewer creeks, are fair traveling for mountain horses. The north side, 
below the great glaciers, is interrupted by exceedingly rough lava 
ridges and the terrible canyons of Bolam and Whitney creeks. The 
west side, though scored by only a single notable canyon—Diller Can- 
yon (pl. 11)—is by far the most difficult. After crossing the tremendous 
slopes of steep and sharp slide rock, very dangerous for horses, on the 
northwest side of Shastina, and surmounting the two principal lava 
ridges west of Shastina Creek, the way to Diller Canyon is comparatively 
easy. But between Diller Canyon and Cascade Gulch, a mile or so north 
of Horse Camp, and extending from timberling downward several thou- 
sand feet, is a chaos of lava the like of which I have never seen. It 
suggests the worst parts of the Snake River and Modoc lava beds 
turned up on end—basins, ridges, and tumultuous piles without order 
or direction, without beginning or ending—dry basins that empty 
nowhere, drier ridges that lead nowhere, until one is worn out with 
thirst and efforts to escape. The whole is hidden in a dark forest of 
Shasta firs whose hardy trunks force themselves out between the lava 
blocks in ways that almost surpass belief. Finally all this stops as 
suddenly as it began, and one emerges from the dark inferno to slake 
his thirst in the refreshing pools of Cascade Gulech—known only to the 
deer—and, with a sense of infinite relief, reenters the area of pumice 
sand and gray shale 
which stretches away 
to the southeast and 
thence onward around 
three-quarters of the 
mountain. 
The timbered valley 
at the west base of 
Shasta falls away both 
to the south and to the 
north. On the south 
it drains immediately 
into the Sacramento 
River; on the north 
into the Shasta River, 
which traverses Shasta 
cee a sty a r . 
Pas Fh Bg OO eal Valley and empties 
Sipmee reer enetin meses ee es ee! into Klamath River. 
Fig. 7.— Pumice sand strewn with gray volcanic shale. Young Shasta Valley is ap 
hemlocks in foreground; white-bark pines in distance. ‘ 
open plain northwest 
of the mountain; it is lowest at the north, and its northwestern cor- 
ner ends in a pocket or basin containing the mining town of Yreka, 
which is doubtless the hottest part of northern California west of the 
axis of the Sierra-Cascade system. 
